Resource of the Week: Keeping an eye on the broadcast, cable and telecom industries
Resource of the Week: Well Connected
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor
This week's resource comes to you from the hard-working folks at the Center for Public Integrity, "a nonprofit organization dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on issues of public concern." One huge issue of public concern is who owns/controls the vast network of media outlets. CPI's "Well Connected" project "is an ongoing investigation...of the businesses that control the nation's information pipelines and of their government overseers. The project is funded by the Ford Foundation, with partial funding from the Open Society Institute."
We direct your attention specifically to the three Research Tools on the righthand site of the home page:
+ Click on the In Your State link. On the righthand side of the next page is a dropdown menu inside a U.S. map. Choose your state and click "Go" to get a report.
Which telecom companies are pulling the strings in your state government? Find out which telecommunications companies are spending the most on lobbying and campaign contributions. Learn about your public utility boards, where they are located and how to file a complaint. Also, view the personal financial disclosure statements of board members and learn how much they earn.
Within this information you'll find a link to a "Public Service Commission Disclosure Ranking Report Card," which evaluates financial disclosure requirements for public service commission/public utility board members in each state. (Florida gets an F. I'm shocked--just shocked.)
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+ You can use the MediaTracker search box to find out who owns the media outlets in your local area. Enter a zip code, a call sign, or a city/state combination. You'll get detailed charts of all the radio and TV stations and major newspapers in your area. A multi-faceted search box at the top allows you to fine-tune your results -- e.g., by geographic radius. Note that you can get detailed profiles of the owner companies by using the dropdown menu in the search box or clicking on the live links in the "owner" column at the far right of each chart.
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+ The InfluenceTracker -- which covers broadcast radio/TV, cable/satellite TV and telephone companies -- provides information on:
Campaign Contributions (from 1998 through September 2004).
Junkets -- e.g., "industry-funded trips...by members of the House and Senate commerce committees and their staffs between January of 2000 and March of 2004."
Lobbying -- "(T)he amounts that companies, associations, and unions spend on lobbying Congress and federal agencies as well as the amounts paid to consultants hired to affect policy."
Revolving Door -- "(T)he most comprehensive outline to date of the back-and-forth movement of people from government to industry."
Do read about the methodology used to gather and process all this information into "a 51,870-record database consisting of every radio and television station and cable television system in the United States." Impressive.
While we're on the topic of media ownership, the editor would like to direct your attention to one of her favorite resources, Who Owns What, a "guide to what the major media companies own," developed and maintained by the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR). This falls into the simple-but-elegant" category. Down the lefthand side of the page is an alphabetical list of the major media companies. Click on each one to see a list of the outlets that company owns in each state, along with brief contact information for the company. On the righthand side of the page is an archive of CJR articles about media ownership.
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